Meanwhile, in North Korea…
...a gift for Dear Leader.
So, Nobel Laureate Maria Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader, provided Trump with a very fancy participation trophy, as per ABC News: Trump accepts Nobel Peace Prize medal from Venezuelan opposition leader Machado.
In a general sense, I am sympathetic to the fact that Machado is hoping to leverage this gift to get Trump to continue to put pressure on the current regime in Venezuela, but it all seems like empty flattery and poor politics in practical terms. Trump has publicly rejected Machado herself as having any role in a post-Maduro Venezuela and has left the regime intact. Further, Trump continues to signal that all he cares about is oil in Venezuela, not the removal of the legacy regime originally installed by Hugo Chávez.
Meanwhile, all of this just continues to reveal Trump’s character (or lack thereof), as Philip Bump rightly noted on Bluesky:
Cuz, ya know, Dear Leader likes his bright shiny objects!
I certainly wouldn’t count on someone who would post something like this:
Do you figure El Taco demanded the cash award as well?
The pressure campaign to force the nobel committee to change the whiner to the felon begins in 3,2,1…
It is deeply, deeply funny to imagine the (almost certain) fate of Machado in 3 years, walking around her house alone because she’s under house arrest by the new regime, just sans peace prize.
Dukes of Hazzard narrator: “Now you might be wondering how I got here…”
This is like someone who buys a piece of sports memorabilia, say a Superbowl Championship ring (OJ’s), then claims to be a Superbowl winner. That isn’t how it works.
@Neil Hudelson: Or as the Talking Heads lyric went:
Machado: Nobel Prize Winner
Trump: Nobel Prize Whiner
Looks like Machado read Dr. Spock on how to deal with hard-to-babysit kids.
Not to mention standing in front of the Declaration of Independence while presenting a gift to a king to court his favor. Wtf? Lol.
“To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:”
Read those that follow in the Declaration and you can pretty much apply them all to our current King. 2nd coming 250 years later! Yikes.
This reminds me of the time a veteran gave Bush Jr. his purple heart, and Bush, the Viet Nam draft dodger, accepted it in person at the White House. It would seem that a lack of class and self-awareness runs through the present Republican Party.
This may be the most pathetic political moment in modern history. And after years and years of Trump, that’s saying something. Both of them are ridiculous in different ways. Trump clearly doesn’t realize how humiliating this is for him, how the whole world is cringing at this toxic man-baby who just pooped his pants and is smiling through the moment.
But Machado…Yet again, a politician who should know better, seeing that Trump is never placated by the most ass-kissing moments…Not a display of great Machiavellian guile.
@Kingdaddy: I think if all she expects is something from in in the moment, in the next few days and weeks, it will work just fine.
She doesn’t seem dumb, and I’ll bet she understands this.
@Kingdaddy:
Slightly less ridiculous than the FIFA peace prize. He looked like a child getting a gold star at elementary school.
@Jay L. Gischer:
Machado may expect something, and El Taco may have even offered her something. Whether she’ll get it, or he even remembers the offer, is a different matter.
Meantime, Machado looks pathetic groveling and kowtowing to such a repulsive personage. I can’t imagine it will play well in Venezuela, though I could easily be mistaken. I felt something like pity mixed with contempt when she announced she’d giver her medal to El Taco.
@a country lawyer:
Trump has also accepted a Purple Heart.
That picture!?!
Worse than the false Nobel tribute is the Shrine to a Copy of the Constitution. It has drapes to protect the copy from uv rays which could potentially damage the copy. Which would require another copy to be ordered. From Esty, I guess?
And it’s flanked by trashy appliqués painted trashy gold by some trashy designer.
There’s a phuck-ton of phony in that photo.
@Kingdaddy:
Have to give Trump this much, he was right about her being unfit to rule Venezuela…or pretty much any place else for that matter. Tragically bereft of the “right stuff”, she is.
That man really is utterly without any normal sense of shame or self-respect.
Knowing Trump’s professed disdain for anything but genuine 18-carat gold, I assume that’s what the frame of Machado’s award is made of. It defies belief that she would go to the trouble and expense of getting such a thing made, just to spit in the face of the Nobel Committee and diminish herself in the eyes of the world.
It’s worth noting that she went straight from the White House to give a speech at the extremely-MAGA Heritage Institute, raising profound doubts she’s the champion of democracy and freedom she pretends to be. Her public appearances in America also make somewhat implausible her narrative about having to travel from Venezuela to Norway in secret, risking her life to make the journey. It would not surprise me, should she ever gain power in Caracas, that she turns out a kindred soul to Milei and Bukele.